All Benefit 100%

My dear fellow teachers, thanks for sharing from your heart and the soles of your feet your responses to the “Interview Questions” in the February Vital Force. I could usually guess the teachers from the responses. I treasure our teacher community beyond words; the organic evolution keeps me Chi-ful.

My practice and approach to teaching change as I “mature” (at 76 years young). I practice because it is an energy-balancing practice that I can share with others. Each class is its own “spiritual community.”

I currently teach at a nursing home, a senior residence, the Hawaii Island Home for Recovery (people transitioning from homelessness), and Hope Services’ program for recently released offenders. Participants range from being severely limited physically and mentally, to physically and emotionally fragile, to amazingly strong from working out while incarcerated, to regular middle-aged women (and a couple of men). Students in my own classes have health concerns ranging from COPD and diabetes to cancer and strokes.

So I won’t be training any “next generations” of TCC teachers. I’m grateful for the opportunities I had, as the first accredited teacher in Chicago, to have hosted accreditation courses and even a national conference. Then and now, “personal, spiritual connectivity” forged a relationship that led toward teaching (then) and toward shared practice (now). I’ve always perceived ”stumbling blocks” as stepping stones toward a destination appropriate for the students, and I’m grateful for the many times when that destination turned out to be accreditation followed by active teaching, even at a very small scale.

Connecting with other teachers has been the same kind of “personal, spiritual connectivity” I experience with students. I have seldom missed an annual conference since I was accredited in 1986. The affinity of our devotion to TCC creates an immediate bond with teachers I am meeting for the first time, even if I interact with them for only a few minutes.

“All Benefit 100%” refers to my experience that anyone who practices TCC at any level receives 100% of the benefits available to that person at that time in that personal and physical place/space.

While my intention is always to practice with integrity, I do so with mindfulness rather than yardsticks or expectations.

I experienced great joy recently when visiting one of my students at a rehab center after she had fallen and fractured her foot in several places. I anticipated the worst, since she has extreme scoliosis and walks with a walker; she does seated TCC. Her face lit up when she saw me and she could not wait to show me all of the TCC movements she could do while lying down, including Light at the Top of the Head! She was explaining to the attendant that the attendant could do these movements standing up just by shifting her weight back and forth (which I demonstrated). Lillian was receiving 100% of the benefits of TCC because she was not only doing the movements with as much integrity as possible, she was also sharing her “Joy Through Movement.”